Robert Cray Band
This Time

Now that George W. Bush has crawled back under the rock from which he
emerged, Robert Cray has gone back to his roots. Shedding the political
overtones that hung over his 2005 set Twenty, he once again has embraced
the proclamations of love and expressions of heartache that dominated his early
fare. This Time is the 15th studio album in Cray’s catalogue. Although it
doesn’t boast any tricks that he hasn’t tried before, it serves as a sterling
example of everything he does best.

One of the biggest criticisms that Cray has faced repeatedly is that the
derivative sound with which he began his career has never progressed. For
certain, This Time follows his familiar blueprint, plucking elements from
his usual sources. That’s What Keeps Me Rockin’ could have been lifted
from B.B. King’s canon, and wisps of Albert Collins’ output lurk inside many of
the collection’s tracks. For the most part, though, Cray surrounds his
blues-baked approach with plenty of soulful strutting. Over the course of the
endeavor, he manages to draw a line that connects Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, and
Al Green.

In truth, the deficiency that undermines This Time isn’t Cray’s
reluctance to forge his own musical path. He might borrow heavily from the past,
but Cray nonetheless is quite masterful at appropriating whatever it is that he
needs to make his point. Rather, his problems stem largely from a reliance upon
material that is far from poetic. Taken in full, This Time stands as a
mediation upon the relationship between men and women, and to be fair, there was
an attempt to sequence the endeavor so that the battle that is waged goes back
and forth before concluding with the uneasy tangle of Truce. Even so, the
lyrics penned by Cray and his collaborators are addled with clichés
that inevitably steal some of his thunder.

Fortunately, this isn’t enough to ruin This Time completely. Cray
approaches the songs with his heart rather than his head. Consequently, he is
able to inject them with an abundance of emotion. His vocals are often smooth as
silk, but just as effortlessly, they can convey gut-wrenching pain and snarling
anger. Likewise, the grooves cooked up by his backing band — which has been
reworked since he last strolled into the studio — help not only to establish the
mood, but also to provide some emotional heft behind his biting guitar licks. In
the end, Cray frequently succeeds in elevating the tracks above their prosaic
foundations, and more often than not, this makes all of the difference in the
world.